When I first saw Péter, I couldn’t keep my face from grimacing. He looked pale, withered, and agitated - in a bout of panic I attempted to clarify that I had been sent to him by his daughter, Lilli. He repeated quickly back to me with a reflected anxiety, Lilli. I passed him the letter that Lilli had written to him.

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After taking a few moments to carefully read the letter, the first thing he did was point over to his cupboards while pleading in Hungarian to me with the little strength he had. I remember meeting his gaze and unlocking that same glassy glint of Lilli in his weathered eyes. I went through the cupboards in a panic while Péter babbled incoherently at me  - I remember realising there was dust in place of ingredients. The plea of Lilli ran through my head as I registered the old man’s decrepit and barren living quarters: Please get the word to him. Make sure he’s okay.

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I hurried out of the house to find a supermarket in the village I had passed along the way. As I drove I began to weigh up whether I should leave him after getting him some food. I had done part of my deal - I'd delivered the news - and that was enough for my peace. I started to think about all the things I would have to do if I stayed - clean out the dust in the shack, cook for the poor man, care for him until he could care for himself. Surely the plea from Lilli to make sure her father was okay didn’t have to include sticking around to be his nurse. The whole place gave me the creeps and the reflection of Lilli in Péter’s face had a deep intensity I found difficulty in grappling with.

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But as I drove further, the heavy weight of dread exerted its pressure on me. What if he has no one else to rely on? What if he’s too frail to take care of himself? What if he dies if I leave him alone? It became clear to me that I would implode myself with what if’s if I left him to his own devices. But I really didn’t want to stay for long… Péter’s lonely stone house on the unruly grasslands felt like a punishment.

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I went into the supermarket and filled my trolley with a family’s worth of food - the village nearby was a sleepy rural haven where it soon became apparent that gossip could travel quickly. From the get-go I felt like the residents were staring at me in ambivalence as I made my way through the aisles.

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No one had shown up to visit on the first night, and so a one night stay with Lilli’s father had quickly turned into two. He had shown no signs of increased mobility and no ability to take care of himself after being fed properly  - his grand journey of both evenings had been from the television he sat at all day to the bed, wheezing and coughing along the way. His mood throughout the day would flutter from a dull monotony to a disconcerted rambling. I wasn’t sure if he was delirious half of the time or genuinely trying to communicate something to me. The only moments of solace I registered on his face were when a hot plate of food was in front of him.

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On the third morning, I noticed that he had been moving around a little bit more. He had woken up earlier and even mustered up the strength to make his own coffee, but he coughed and wheezed throughout the whole process. I tried to suggest that he visit a doctor with crudely muddled gestures imitating his cough. He quickly became very snappy. My spine was stiff from sleeping on the tiny sofa, my hair was a mess, and the meek water pressure from Péter’s rusty shower head made me feel constantly dirty. It was three days in and I was more desperate than ever for a break from Péter’s air space. Our lack of real communication, coupled with the total social isolation on that lonely hill made me begin to deeply resent him.

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I decided I would take matters into my own hands and find the nearest pharmacy to try and get something for the old man's wheeze, armed with the hope that someone in there would speak English. To my luck, a man who was beckoned from the back shelves came to speak to me about my concerns with Péter’s health.

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I began to describe the situation to him, “I just wanted to talk to someone because I’ve found myself in a bit of a strange situation. I’ve been caring for the old man up on the hill for the past few days, Péter? I’m not sure if you know him, or if there’s anyone else who can possibly take care of him? I was only supposed to be here to check in on him and deliver some news, but when I found him he was in a terrible state. Couldn’t we get a doctor to check up on him? He’s got an awful wheeze and cough. I don’t know how long it had been since he was last fed before I visited.”

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The clerk sized me up and down, before taking a sharp intake. “I suggest you stop caring for Péter Bodi and leave him to fend for himself.”

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I stood there for a moment gawking back at him in a mild shock. “Péter is banned from this pharmacy - and he won't receive any help on my watch.”, he continued.

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It was at this point I wondered whether Péter’s coldness was just the Hungarian standard as I began to weigh up how somebody could be so heartless. “Could you at least prescribe me something? For the wheeze? I can’t exactly leave him to die, can I?”, I asked in a last ditch hope.

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He started conversing with the lady in the back in Hungarian and they began to argue as the conversation progressed. When the conversation was over he told me to wait for a moment.

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I felt like I was left waiting for a long while - and I couldn’t help but feel like the wait was some kind of punishment for knowing Péter. A nagging devil whispered lucrative alternatives to the dire situation in my ear. I’d feel awful about breaking a promise to Lilli, but- I’d be able to wash away my guilt of leaving her father if he were a terrible man. I mean, what kind of man gets banned from the pharmacy? There’s not a lot you can know about someone when you can’t communicate with them - it could be very possible that Péter was a bad man, despite his connection with Lilli. When the clerk returned with the inhaler in hand, I tried to interrogate him a little bit more but he refused to engage, firmly asking me to leave and not to return with any concerns about Péter’s health.

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As I lingered on the encounter I just had, I began to feel suspicious of Péter. I had tried to give him the benefit of the doubt because of his ill health, and I try not to judge a book by its cover, but he had a certain stand-offish nature that I just couldn’t shake. I started to feel very uneasy about the whole situation. I can’t say I wouldn’t have just dropped off the inhaler and left after that interaction in any other circumstance. Two days of care for a potentially morally reprehensible man should have been more than enough. But when I returned to Péters little shack, what I saw surprised me.

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Péter had sat himself up at the dining table with a colourful look on his face I hadn’t seen before. I distinctly remember getting another glimpse of beautiful Lilli, who struck me in his expression like a watchful priest.  ‘What is your favourite food?’ he proudly stuttered, pointing at a page in a translation book he had pulled out with images of popular dishes around the world with their respective names in English and Hungarian.

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As I looked more intently at the new colour on his face and a renewed vibrance in his eyes, I began to let myself feel a bit of joy and my doubts washed away for a moment. I won’t pretend the joy wasn’t fueled by the selfish fulfilment of making an impact; but seeing someone I was helping back to health with such warmth on their face felt like a confirmation that I should stick it out a little bit longer. His transformation and attempt to flatter me had almost made me forget what had happened at the pharmacy.

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I looked through the pictures in the book and laid my finger on one. ‘My favourite food is hamburgers - and you?’, I replied with a smug sense of messianism. He flared his crooked teeth and flicked through his notes.

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- ‘Hamburger. We eat tomorrow.’

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What I didn’t quite realise until the next morning was that he would be the one preparing the hamburgers. When I got home with the ingredients, Péter was eagerly awaiting me with a new phrase he had learnt, ‘I will cook.’

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I found a home in that cold grey shack when we ate Péter’s hamburgers and enjoyed each other's company that following night. We played board games together. We shared little details of our lives with his translation book like we were in a languages exam at school. He even got a tin out with some old pictures of Lilli for us to flick through.

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As we looked through the old pictures of Lilli I would hold them up side by side with his face in an attempt to communicate just how much they looked alike. He would respond by playfully trying to imitate her elaborate poses with a duck-face pout. Soon after we caught ourselves staring at the sprawled out photographs in silence as the atmosphere declined into a quiet morose. I broke the silence by trying to articulate just how proud Péter should be of his daughter, but I don’t think he understood.

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He got up and attempted to crack open a bottle of whisky, to which I snatched the bottle from him and told him off. I hid the bottle in a high place which sent him back into his usual snappiness which indicated it was time for bed.

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That night I fell asleep with a sense of security which I’d felt had been lost for a while. Warmed with the pleasure of a good night’s company and the knowledge of Péter's improving health, I began to feel like I wasn’t such a bad person after all.

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I was awoken the next morning by the rattle of the front door and the lethargic clump of Péter’s footsteps. For the first time in days, he had been outside - and he had been shopping! My immediate disbelief and excitement quickly turned to fear as I began to watch him hunch over and cough, covering the right side of his face.

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I got up off the sofa and ran over to him, guiding him to sit down. I soon realised he had a black eye. I immediately tried to figure out what had happened. He indicated through an exasperated bodily movement and some broken English that he had fallen on the way to the shop. My contentment from the night before had been washed away by a deep exhaustion that I struggled to contain. Why did he have to go and get hurt?

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I began to scold him for trying to go out. As a result of my complaints he became agitated, cackling at me in Hungarian with what sounded like expletives. I could see his shopping bags were from the newsagents in the village. I rummaged through them to find sugar, some lemons, and an empty can of beer. Why had he wasted his energy just for that?

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What really bothered me was the inkling that the injury wasn’t from a fall like Péter had suggested. There were no other grazes on his face or body. No reduced signs of mobility. Just that puffy black eye that stared at me like an albatross around my neck. His mood was as sour as ever - I could understand the embarrassment from falling affecting him, but this felt like an anger that stemmed from something more sinister.

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I decided to go back to the pharmacy. I wanted to get something to tend to his eye, but I wanted answers just as badly. I didn’t care that I had been asked not to return - I was sick of being restricted, and I just wanted someone to have a proper conversation with. But when I got there, the man who spoke English was nowhere to be seen.

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So, I walked to the newsagent where Péter’s shopping was from. I could’ve sworn the villager’s eyes lingered on me in suspicion as I made my way there. The newsagent was small, occupied by an old woman reading the day's paper and a clerk. As soon as I entered the atmosphere was sucked out of the air and the clerk began rattling at me in Hungarian. It was clear he didn’t want me in there but I was just about sick of being suffocated by the tiny fucking grey shack and the tiny fucking rainy village that I just had to speak my mind.

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“You know I’ve just about had enough of people shouting at me today, okay? I am doing my best. I’ve been trying my hardest to be a good person and get on but I've just about had enough. Everybody here seems to have an issue with my presence and I would love to know why so we can be through with it all. ”  I had let my emotions slip out, half thinking that no one would understand me, half needing to regain some kind of power in this oppressive atmosphere I had found myself in the past week. But to my surprise, the old woman with the newspaper replied to me.

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“You care for Péter Bodi. He is not welcome here.” she said with a cutting seriousness. And I just needed to know the story. I pleaded to know why the village hates him so badly, but I couldn’t get the words out of her. This woman was filled with vague phrases - that he was ‘violent’, ‘a disgrace to the village’, and that ‘he should be ashamed’, but what I really needed was the truth. Then I could have run away without feeling like I was going to vomit from the doubt of it all. But I just couldn’t get anything more out of her. I tried to talk to people on my way back to the car, but they all ignored me like I was a beggar on the street. The isolation of it all began to slip right into my soul again despite my progress in wellbeing from the previous night.

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The drive back was like a stab in the gut. All that joy I'd felt from nursing someone back to health - all that progress with allowing myself to be happy for cheering Péter up and repaying the years of favours I had built up with Lilli. And there I was, terrified to go back to him, eclipsed by the idea that I’d made the wrong choice to stay and help the man recover. There could be no good reason why a village doesn’t like you. No good reason why someone would punch you in the face. No good reason for me to face this draining destiny any longer. But I needed to hear it from him.

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When I got back to the house I smelt the subtle reek of whisky. The old man’s ability to reach the bottle was a reassuring sign of his increased mobility which gave me another clue that it was time to go. I could see from his notebook he had been studying his English some more. I decided I would test his skills and question him about why the people in the village didn’t like him.

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We sat down at the table. I was patient and gentle with him, trying my best to figure things out. At first he was deflective, waving his hands off me - acting like he couldn’t understand when I was pointing at words in his guide - swaying his eyes back over to the television in contempt. I remembered just how easily he had picked up English phrases the night before and spoke with me. I wasn't letting him off that easily. I motioned to him that I believed he was punched, that I didn’t buy that he had fallen.

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I found my way to the Hungarian translation for violent. He began to flick through his notes, saying phrases like, “The village lie”, and “I am a good man!” which he had clearly learnt in preparation for this inevitable confrontation. I tried to reassure him that I was just curious and not there to judge to keep him at bay.

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After grappling with him and praying that he could give me a reason to stay or leave, he started to become more and more angry with me. I eventually slammed his translation book shut and walked away from the table to go lie on the sofa in defeat. Before I knew it he had made his way over too, waving his cane at me. He was holding his half-drunk glass of whisky and domineering over me with a newfound energy.

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Through the wheezes and coughs he began to yell at me in his mother tongue. He took a sip from his glass and jilted his face while his hand trembled, causing him to drop and shatter the whiskey glass on the floor in pieces. That made him shout and wave his cane at me more. All the remnants of Lilli disappeared from his scrunched, ugly face at that moment. I quickly got up to fetch the broom and started sweeping the glass into the corner of the kitchen, ignoring his shouts.

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As he continued to wave his cane and cough in my face some more, motioning me to clean up the mess in anger, I started to fear for my safety. I had seen glimpses of his temper before, but this was unlike anything I’d experienced. I couldn’t let myself get hurt. When the mess was all sorted out I grabbed my coat and said an abrupt goodbye to him, slamming the door with the intention never to return.

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I arranged for a few food shops to be sent to Péter to appease my conscience. I still think about what I did. I wonder how the whole situation can better me and think about what I can learn from it.

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But that nagging doubt still eats away at me when I think about the acts of kindness he extended to me that I never bothered to acknowledge . I start to think about how he exerted all that mental effort just to learn English for me. I didn’t try to speak a lick of Hungarian back. I think about how he struggled to make me hamburgers when he was barely mobile, and how we shared a genuine connection that night which I had been yearning for. And I think about the two lemons and bag of sugar he bought back from the newsagent the day he got his black eye. I’d told him lemonade was my favourite drink the night before. He wanted to make me happy. He could sense my isolation and he just wanted to help. He had gone out of his way in ill health to accommodate me and please me. In return, I had painted him as a villain just like everybody else.

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I think about how Lilli used to tell me stories with such nostalgia about her fishing trips with her dad. How it was him who encouraged her to move to the UK and follow her dreams. How could a man who raised somebody so brilliant be an evil man?

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Worst of all is the thought that I left him out there all alone without a friend to turn to. I had driven myself to madness with the isolation on that godforsaken hill, but I didn’t even consider that Péter was serving a much harsher sentence. I still can’t shake that cheery smile of his when he so kindly asked me my favourite food, that humorous side I saw when he was imitating Lilli’s pictures. I can’t shake the fact that up until his outburst, he was nothing but warm to me.

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I lie awake at night riddled with unease. I wonder how he’s doing. I think of the things left unsaid between us. I get the curiosity to know him more. The only thing that keeps me from driving over there some nights is the potential horror of walking in on a dead body that I neglected. I try to remind myself that I should come first. Part of me feels like I should’ve never let myself get involved in the first place, that my naive curiosity had yet again got me wrapped up in a toxic situation and it was about time I set myself boundaries. I thought I had already learnt that lesson.

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It got so bad that I ran to my car at three in the morning last night and began to drive from Budapest to make the 4 hour journey to Péter’s. I didn’t even want to go in and visit. I just wanted to drive past, perhaps catch the glint of a light in his window that would indicate a sign of life. But as I began to get further out of the capital I was eclipsed by my uncertainty. I was angry at myself for letting Péter latch onto me like a parasite and drain me of my energy, yet I still yearned to visit and make things right. I wanted to be the person I was before the whole ordeal even began.

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I pulled over the car in a panic and took a deep breath. As the rain pattered on the bonnet of my car, the warm orange street light illuminating the path forward, I reminded myself of my life and health. As I felt the suffocating weight slowly lift from my chest, I became aware of how deeply I yearned for peace.

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Go where the wind takes you, I told myself. It may blow you into danger, but roll with the punches. Be kind to the wounds. Embrace the scars and let them take you somewhere new.